Look at supposed hate speech. An empiricist would ignore Obama’s recent warnings about the new wave of right-wing tough talk from Limbaugh and Beck, and determine instead whether the president remembers the novel Checkpoint, or the award-winning film about killing George Bush, or the venom of a Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann.

That is, a traditional inquirer would weigh the furor of the right against left, in ascertaining whether hate speech is at all partisan or simply politics of all stripes. And he would remind the president that it was Barack Obama himself who asked of his supporters to “get in their face”and bragged “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” and who used graphic examples in damning his opponents (cf. the taunt to Hannity (“he’ll tear him up”).

But you see, all this is not so. The postmodernist constructs a different reality. A person of color who is striving to level the playing field against oppressive interests speaks the “truth” to power. Of course, from time to time he draws on emotive language to drive home his points — quite unlike the cool, detached, and deliberate attack narratives of those seeking to protect corporate or entrenched interests.

When Obama attacks Beck, or Hannity, or calls for someone to bring a gun to a fight, or has Rahm Emanuel curse a fence-sitting representative, these protocols seem extreme only to those whose economic interests are threatened. Poor children in Detroit or in the barrios of El Paso don’t get the opportunity for tit-for-tat score-keeping, as if millionaires “think” they are entitled to the same “fair” treatment as their victims. When Limbaugh rails, it is to protect his Gulfstream 550; when Obama “distorts,” it is the expediency needed to wring from the wealthy salvation for the voiceless.

Racialism — no such thing!

Race is the same. A person of color can hardly, given the history of oppression accorded to non-whites, himself be guilty of dividing people by race.

So if Obama says “typical white person,” or entitles his book from the sloganeering of a racist preacher he courted for 20 years, or stereotypes rural Pennsylvanians, or dubs police as acting “stupidly” in matters of supposed racial confrontation, or has an attorney general who damns the country as “cowards” on race, or appoints a Supreme Court judge who thinks a “wise Latina” by virtue of race and gender has superior wisdom, or recruits a Van Jones who characterizes everyone from polluters to mass murderers by race (I could go on), well, all this is not at all racial stereotyping with an intent to deprecate.

Why? Because constructs of language, expression, and reality hinge on status and class. Obama is seeking to dethrone traditional nexuses of power. So when he, from time to time, muses on real racial inequality, reactionaries retreat to “objective” “standards” of reciprocity to thwart his proposed changes.

Take-overs — what Take-overs?

And those “take-overs”? Take-over from what to what?

An outraged managerial and capital laden class feigns victimhood when working folks at last have a say in how the nation’s profits are derived and enjoyed, originating from their own labor in banking, insurance, and auto production. All these retreats to “private” income, “my property,” “liberty,” “The Founders,” and the “Constitution” simply can be deconstructed to “don’t dismantle a system that is weighted in my favor!”

No wonder “they” construct all sort of scary “narratives” about the Postal Service, Amtrak, Social Security, Medicare, and other shared collective enterprises that are branded “insolvent” and “unsustainable,” despite serving the people — the economic gobbledygook talk from those who really mean they are not willing to transfer their own unfairly obtained capital to more deserving working folks through legitimate “redistributive change.”

The Voices of the Oppressed

Finally, examine foreign policy. Now many of us are upset that we court enemies and shun friends, and seem to be reaching out to the most authoritarian regimes imaginable, whether Putin’s Russia, or Iran, or Venezuela. Well, once again, that is only because you construct reality on the norms predicated upon your own comfortable globalized privilege — that, in fact, as Obama thankfully grasps, is a result of thousands of daily oppressions, both here and abroad, of which you are not even aware.

Consider the trumped-up crisis with Iran. We hold Ahmadinejad to our artificially constructed standards of “civil” discourse and “fair” play — forgetting (but not Obama) the 1953 Western-inspired coup, the profit-mongering of the global oil companies, and the neo-imperialist role of the United States in the Gulf. We hide all that with constructs like “the mullahs,” the “theocrats,” “Islamofascism” and other demonization rooted in class, gender, race, and religion.

If Iran had been behind a past U.S. coup, if Iranian warships were off the coast of California, if an Iranian coal company were buying and selling our national energy production, then we too might sound somewhat unhinged as we sought to employ language to offset our oppressor’s ill-gotten material advantages.

In an American constructed world order, we artificially adjudicate Iran a rogue would-be nuclear menace for wishing five or six small nuclear weapons to protect its vulnerable borders (American troops now abut them); we have thousands of such devices, and have used them, and yet are deemed “responsible” and “peaceful,” we of all people, who, as the president once reminded us, have alone used them on real people.

So what Obama has done is “contextualized” the world, and “located,” as it were, the seemingly hostile anti-American rhetoric of “enemies” into a proper race/class/gender narrative.

And what he has found is that nationalism and the construct of the state have fooled us into thinking that there are “allies” and “enemies,” when, in fact, these are mere labels used by the privileged to “exaggerate” “difference” that only enhances Western entrenched economic, racial, cultural and political hegemonies.

Once, thanks to Obama, we “unpack” that “reality,” then we can see that most Americans have much in common with Venezuelans, Russians, Iranians, Syrians and others who likewise struggle against the same enemies that brought us the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and now oppose health care reform, cap and trade, amnesty, and the take over of the automobile, banking, and insurance industries.

So a postmodernist looks at the Falklands and does not rely on archaic notions of “sovereignty” or a “history” of a prior war. Instead, one sees a postcolonial power once more claiming “ownership” of a far distant island, proximate to a Latin American people, with long experience with European and American economic and political exploitation. Presto — we are now “neutral,” which means we don’t see anything intrinsically convincing in Britain’s claims to the Falklands.

Note Israel. What are we to make of the Netanyahu humiliating smack down, the seeming indifference over the Iranian nuclear program, the nominations and appointments on the Middle East front of a Freeman or Power, the reach out to Syria and Iran, the interview with al Arabiya and the Cairo speech, the bow to a Saudi royal, the ritual trashing of George Bush juxtaposed to the praise of a Saudi king, the strange past outbursts of Obama advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski about hypothetically shooting down Israeli planes on their way to Iran, the ranting about Jews from the former spiritual advisor Wright, etc.

In short, the answer is that Israel is a construct of Western privilege — its democratic, capitalist, and Western customs hinge on the oppression of a vast “other” that is far more egalitarian, socialist, and antithetical to Western consumer-capitalism with all of its pathologies of race, class, and gender exploitation.

In that context, in archaic fashion, we struggle to damn any effort to end such hegemony and empower the voices of the oppressed. We are not, in fact, “allied” to Israel, but properly speaking instead should be to the underprivileged in the Gaza slums, to those without health care on the West Bank, and, yes, to the progressive Israelis of noble spirit who are trying to battle the reactionary Likudniks and instead do something about the tentacles of their own discriminatory state, whose capital is derived from exploited labor and resources of a silenced other.

Standards of What?

I could go on, but you get the picture of our first postmodern presidency. For 14 months we have tried to use abstract benchmarks like “did Obama contradict himself?,” “did Obama break another promise?,” “did Obama really think borrowing another $2 trillion won’t help to bankrupt us?,” “did Obama indeed think another entitlement ‘saves’ money?,” “did Obama snub another ally and court another enemy?,” “did Obama apologize again?” — when, in fact, such linear thinking, such artificially constructed “norms,” such “facts” are nothing of the sort at all. To Obama, our first postmodern president, such facts and truth are mere signatures of privilege, and so he is offering us another — a postmodern — way of looking at the world.

233 Comments, 131 Threads

1.
David Thomson

The postmodernist student is inherently anti-intellectual. They are incapable of following a logical argument. Ideology is ultimately all that counts. There is no genuine reason to bother acquiring facts and evidence to support your argument. At a minimal level, one merely needs to embrace the zeitgeist and be on the right side of history. This mindset pervades the softer sciences to such an extent that normally only a hard science credential deserves instant respect.

I disagree, in part. Postmodernists can idea follow (and make) logical arguments. But they start from assumptions that are ideological in the extreme and alien to those who don’t share them. They assume that capitalism is the greatest evil of all, that it is inherently European, and that wealth can be generated in its absence.

carl appears to be a typical Lefty: just derogatory opinion with not one iota of evidence for his assessment.

I teach second graders: they’re now expected to give examples–from the text, no less–to support their ideas. carl, if you want to be taken seriously by anyone besides your mother, that’s a good strategy. You might try it.

I wish to disagree with you as to the real reason for the rise of ideology over that of logic and argumentation. Ever since the Godel’s incompleteness theorems (among others) appeared (but not exclusively due to them), the limitations of logic have been obvious, and the vacuum from these limits has been rapidly filled with axiomatic statements, ie ideology.

It reaches very deep, way deep – maybe subject for another discussion.

From the above responses to my post I realize that ACORN is still around, wearing turtle necks of various colors.

I would have liked a response to the Godel incompleteness theorems, as the basic reason for the collapse of “logical” argumentation, by Thompson or anyone else, knowledgeable on the subject nonetheless and not an ACORN operative.

My lead was that this “difficulty” in logic is reaching deep into the logical inconsistencies of the various Darwinian and marxist constructs.

The “roots” of the current construct of postmodernism run very deep, and seeds can be found in Descartes, (what can be doubted) Kant’s categories, and Nietszche’s focus on will to power. Then we see logical positivism which denies the qualitative and Wittgenstien’s focus on language. One might even say that Plato’s Thrasymachus was expressing a “postmodern” ideology that ‘justice is the will of the stronger.’ Plato denies that claim, but today we’ve somehow fallen under its sway again.

VDH’s take on postmodernism is right on, but President Obama is not the first US president to publicly express it. Bill Clinton’s “depends on the meaning of the word “is”" was entirely postmodern. President GWBush’s justifications for the Iraq adventure also bordered on the postmodern.

While there is no PostModern philosphy per se, there is a group of contemporary ideas that underly a radical shift away from linear thinking, away from a demand for factual validation, and away from the accountability of personal authority. While postmodern deconstruction is good at taking down existing institutional authority structures, most advocates of postmodern approaches don’t realize that the philosophy also invalidates itself, leaving power as the only metric by which anyone can live.

Quite a while ago a guy named Jesus told a parable about the dangers of that idea; the one about God and Mammon, or Wisdom and Power. Can’t serve them both. And if God or Wisdom is no longer possible because the postmodernist has deconstructed it, that leaves only one Master.

I’m not sure I buy into this. The Gödel-Rosser Theorem doesn’t say that logic is empty of meaning, just that it has limits. Postmodernism is at least partly influenced by logic in another way, though — in the attempt to find a complete logical, axiomatic construction of mathematics, Frege, Whitehead and Russell, and Gödel (among many others) were forced to confront the fact that the mapping of some symbol, like ’2′, to what we mean when we think of the number two, is essentially arbitrary. You need to establish some axoims, a formal language, and then you see if you can do something useful or interesting with it.

This isn’t a foreign or unusual concept: “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is an assertion of certain axioms.

Postmodern analysis is useful in that it leads to examining what the underlying axioms really are, forces them out into the open; this can reveal some assumptions that, when clarified, don’t make sense. Ayn Rand is very postmodern in that sense: Atlas Shrugged is an extensive deconstruction of conventional morality and the shame derived from it. She deconstructs that down to an axiom: the individual has no worth, only the collective has worth. She then reverses that axiom to say that the individual’s survival and happiness is a better basis on which to determine values, and fictively demonstrates that axiom’s superiority.

The point is that it’s not postmodernism per se that is the problem. It’s rather that postmodern analysis has led many people to perform the deconstruction, thereby losing faith in the credibility of the axioms they learned, but then don’t find a new set of axioms in which they can have faith.

This leads to the essentially coercive, violent notion that there is no meaning, only power — which is, I think, the root cause of what VDH is observing.

I define postmodernism as the rejection that human nature is set in stone. The Judeo-Christian ethos contends that the concept of original sin is minimally metaphorically true. Human beings do not improve over time. They are still the same and rather flawed individuals since our ancestors lived in caves. It therefore behooves one to study history. Alexander the Great can be readily compared to George Patton, and Julius Caesar to Dwight D. Eisenhower. But everything changes dramatically if you believe that humans evolve as the years go by. In that case, why bother researching the historical records? Wouldn’t you have better things to do—like playing tiddlywinks or shooting marbles? The new man and woman may be so dramatically improved that it would be a complete waste of time.

A postmodernist can indeed be very practical regarding certain areas of their life. The same pseudo-educated clown claiming, “everything is relative” will laugh in your face if you suggested that he trade a one hundred dollar bill for your penny. These people are not logically consistent because their postmodernist views are often nothing more than an excuse to be self-indulgent. They are the spoiled brats of Civilization that parasites off its wealth and power.

Okay, that’s fairly wildly off from what most people mean by “postmodern” — which is itself kinda postmodern so maybe that’s good. VDH’s definition, with relativism and sensitivity to the context of discourse, is more like the “conventional” meaning.

A postmodernist in my way of looking at things is simply a lazy agnostic or atheist who wants to find some pseudo-intellectual sounding gobbledygook to rationalize away their self-indulgent lifestyle. They must be treated with intellectual contempt and as enemies of civilization. By the way, this is how the author of the Wikipedia article defining postmodernism addresses the matter:

“Postmodernism is a movement in the humanities characterized by denial of objective truth and global cultural narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations. In terms of rhetoric, postmodern philosophers examine texts in terms of the motives of the person making it. It emphasizes the role of language, and of power relations involved in being male (versus female), straight (versus gay), white (versus colored), and imperial (versus colonial). Postmodernity has influenced many disparate fields of the humanities, such as literary criticism, linguistics, art history, and photography.”

“But everything changes dramatically if you believe that humans evolve as the years go by”.

I agree with most of what you say, but I have to take exception to the above statement. This is a very common misunderstanding of evolution that Progressives have used since Darwin first published. Evolutionary change is not based on some progressive improvement, but on adapting only to changes in the environment. There is no “Progress” in evolution; history is very important and needs to be studied because it helps us see past mistakes. As humans, we are more and more able to create the environment we live in and that environment will, in turn, affect us. What we do today will influence who we will be tomorrow. We are not automatons being controlled by outside forces; there is Free Will.

I would disagree with your last sentence. hard science credentials are the only ones likely to be worthy of respect, but it should hardly be “instant.” there are too many persons with apparently convincing hard science credentials who espouse ideas with no scientific basis, like anthropogenic global warming and evolution as a mechanism for biological diversity.

That is why I qualified my assertion with “normally.” One, for instance, can pretty well take it for granted that an individual possessing a hard science degree in engineering or advanced mathematics usually has their act together—in their area of specialization. They might be easily seduced, however, into jumping on an ideological bandwagon like global warming. But that’s an entirely another subject to be discussed at a later time. A softer degree in black studies, women studies, education, gay studies, or even English more often than not cannot be taken seriously. It is hard not to initially burst out laughing when you find out somebody “earned” a credential in any of these more nebulous disciplines. A postmodernist academic cannot fool around with 2+2=4. Alas, this same silly person can find all sorts of weird ways of praising a paper expounding on “The Transgender Inclinations of William Shakespeare Revealed in Hamlet.”

The subject matter of the article ins’t per se one on “hard” science and their “weight” in argumentation, but rather an issue in either “soft” science or logic/math. I fully agree with you on AGW and Darwininan/Cosmological Evolution “falacies,” but as it is pointed out some hints might be found in the canons and use of symbolic logic.

David, I agree with your assessment. Furthermore, I suggest that Postmodernists may also be identified as antagonists, whose solutions for an ailing culture are as vapid and as damaging as virally infested swamp water and mud would be, if fed to an unfortunately dehydrated man, who is about to encounter a yet unseen angry hippopotamus.

A postmodernist society ultimately commits suicide. It will be utterly self absorbed and refuse to fight its existential enemies—and sacrifice for future generations. The “me generation” is easily tempted by absurd Keynesian economic doctrines because “in the long run we all are dead.”

there is theoretical hope that the conservative leaning people, who are really still in the majority will reverse the trend. …but from a practical standpoint they never have. they always find it is easier to compromise. little by little they lose ground.

McCain is a perfect example of how compromise got the American society where it is today. He was always tripping over himself to cross the aisle. Congress and the senate are nothing but opportunist thieves and clowns and before long the supreme court (not the singers) will also be lost, heck they are more then half way there now. Reason has not been found in Washington for many years.

whats the future … sadly it is like Zimbabwe or Venezuela …maybe Russia if you are lucky.

there is theoretical hope that the conservative leaning people, who are really still in the majority will reverse the trend. …but from a practical standpoint they never have. they always find it is easier to compromise. little by little they lose ground.

McCain is a perfect example of how compromise got the American society where it is today. He was always tripping over himself to cross the aisle. Congress and the senate are nothing but opportunist thieves and clowns and before long the supreme court (not the singers) will also be lost, heck they are more then half way there now. Reason has not been found in Washington for many years.

whats the future … sadly it is like Zimbabwe or Venezuela …maybe Russia if you are lucky.

I have a lot of contempt for American Jews who think that Obama is the cat’s meow because they value liberalism over all else. However, Obama made one MAJOR mistake (which I probably shouldn’t reveal here) regarding Jews–liberal, conservative, orthodox, or reconstructionist. American Jews and other Jews are absolutely impervious to being humiliated.

Unlike Arabs and Muslims, there is no such thing as “humiliating” a Jewish leader such as Natanyahu or any other Jewish leader. Jews do not care what others think of us. We have many bad words for non-Jews who try to push us around. So Obama just cut himself off at the knees when he didn’t invite Netanyahu for dinner.

Promethea, as a mostly-ex-liberal Jew surrounded by liberal Jews, I would love to agree with you. But unfortunately most of the Jews I know are gleeful that Netanyahu was “humiliated” by Obama. Bibi is only slightly less evil than Sharon and Bush, in their eyes. Israelis, OTOH, don’t care as much but still care more than they should.

And of course, perception is 95% of everything in politics and diplomacy, so whether or not Jews or Israelis care about being “humiliated”….it was done to send a message to the world and the world saw it.

Liberal Jews are unwittingly cooperating with their existential enemies. These people are eradicating themselves off the face of the Earth. They have very few children. Only orthodox Jews seem interested in having large families. What are the birth rates of “reform” Jews? One suspects that they are very low.

I think I understand what you’re saying. Although you don’t directly identify yourself as Jewish, it appears from your post that you might be. Presuming same and presuming your comment was sincere and not sarcastic, I agree. As a Catholic who has had and still has many Jewish people in my life, including friends, employees and business partners, I find Jews have a resiliency that is admirable.

I believe Israel will always do what is best for Israel, without bowing to the will of anyone, even the world’s only superpower. They have nothing to lose. Furthermore, they know, despite what they hear from our government, that our people overwhelming support Israel. The recent diplomatic debacle at the White House, I believe backfired on the Administration. Their acts and omissions betrayed them for the fools they are. Israel will proceed as they must, as they do not suffer fools willingly. I admire that.

I think most Americans (and our Administrations) for most of the last century enjoyed such a resilience, but I fear many Americans in this “post-modern” era are too concerned with being liked than correct. Call it what you want, “white guilt” or “politically correct” or simply fear of confrontation. Whatever it is, it signals an internal cultural decay. If we as a country do not overcome such decay, we are doomed, much like the Roman Empire, which rotted for years from the inside before it was destroyed by invaders.

I agree 100% with Promethea. Latins have ‘or-goo-yo-sa’ or a special pride. Moslems have ‘honor’. Both are very touchy about it. But as long as nobody’s killing us Jews…who cares? Our comedians do more ‘put downs’ then any other group. So much violence has happenned and recorded in Jewish history, words will not hurt.

Interesting and an insightful look into how Obama and those around him think, Dr. Hanson. What, exactly, should we expect when all this blows up in Obama’s face? For the objective fact of the matter is; under Obama the USA is a harmless enemy and a worthless ally. At home, the combination of reckless spending and socialization of the economy can only result in massive inflation, a repudiation of debt, and a collapse of health care.

In fact, I would argue that the US economy will soon enter a negative feedback loop: Taxes will inevitably rise and are already scheduled to do so. This will drain money from productive economic activity, further aggravating unemployment. So unemployment goes up, the tax base shrinks, programs are starved, yet the demand for tax dollars increases due to pensions, new programs, and so on. Economically, the situation can only get worse barring a massive turn-around on Obama and the Democrats part.

Abroad, I think Iran will soon (this year or next at the latest) begin a new ear of nuclear terrorism. At the same time we can expect aggressive activity by Russia, China, and whoever else wants to re-draw the map. And Obama will do absolutely nothing to stop it. Not to mention the fact that under Obama Islamic terrorism now has a free hand.

So, confronted with failure, what will Obama and those who think like him do? My guess is, he will look for a scapegoat of some sort.

Having worked in investment publishing years ago, I agree with ALL of your points.

I believe, that Obama and his friends, HATE America’s incredible success story, and are doing their best to manage our exceptionalism and global influence DOWNWARD. When you look at his friends and associates, you do not see either self-made success stories or “regular” people. You see an assortment of personal failures, angry at the world, and particularly angry at the United States. Most of them ARE socialists, marxists, maoists etc. None of them have real world, corporate experience. They all come out of academia and our nation’s most liberal law schools. To sit, for 20 years, in a church with a screwball like Reverand Wright, one must ask, what the heck is wrong with you. His supporters excuses fill filing cabinets, and the young who voted for him because he was “hip,” “cool,” “metrosexual” etc. well fortunately, many of them are now unemployed.

The Obama-pocalypse is not failure . . . because failure is not an option. Nothing is defined as failure as it cannot exist, thus only as success . . . thus the creation of the Iranian Nuclear Free State . . . has the meaning that Nuclear maintains their Freedom . . . thus comes the Freedom to use the weapon on whom ever they chose . . . for that also is creating new freedom for the opressed . . . yes the freedom to live in a nuclear decimated landscape . . . appoccalyptic that even today it looks like such a landscape . . . short only the ionizing radiation.

Nice analysis, Professor. It’s always good to know, as you helplessly watch the skipper punch holes in the keel, what’s motivating him to do it.

Post-modernism was invading the campus in force just about the time I was in college. It was kind of interesting, and a little sad, to see the earnest leftist academics of the ’60s and ’70s caught flat-footed by the utterly unaccountable philosophical nihilism of the new arrivals — just one or two at first, in the social sciences and philosophy. Caring about nothing, post-modernism could never be cornered. It left the king in the dust, royalism-wise.

On the other hand, it was completely asinine. All you needed was a high school education and parents who’d done a halfway good job, and you were immune to the po-mo vibe. We may have been in one of the last classes that can say this, but I can tell you that we weren’t interested in impressing the more philosophically radical, don’t-nuthin-mean-nuthin profs. I even laugh now thinking about how impossible we were to radicalize, and what a source of frustration we must have been.

Only a very, very wealthy society can tolerate the kind of moody, destructive irresponsibility these folks cultivate. They don’t DO anything at all that’s useful. The most important aspect of this truth isn’t so much that they aren’t producers, it’s that they never have to confront having failed because they performed poorly — or even just because things don’t always go the way they need to for you to succeed. Everyone else from firemen to farmers, accountants to plumbers, does have to face unbending reality on a regular basis. You can deconstruct “fire” all you want, but while you’re doing that, it’s gonna git ya.

Imagine a society so colossally wealthy and interdependent that it’s stupid enough to elect a post-modernist as its leader. I think the truth is, Barack Obama is the Paris Hilton to our society’s rootless, prideful secularism. That really is what it all looks like, folks — and congratulations: you paid for it.

I believe that “post-modernism” is essentially “neo-nihilism”. Most ideologies are (or think they are) forward-thinking political/economic schemes. Obama isn’t the erudite intellectual his supporters paint him as; his ideology is anti-American, at least, and pro-Marxist in the long run.

To advocate destruction of a free-enterprise capitalist system, which has empirically demonstrated to be a wealth generator, and replacing it with a neo-Marxist economic system of centralized control and collectivism, is simply inane (at best) and self-destructive at worst.

Postmodernism is inherently nihilistic. It acts on the social framework as battery acid on human skin. Belief in God may be ultimately foolish—but it is minimally a useful myth. A secularist society is doomed. If nothing else, too many of its citizens will refuse to raise a sufficient number of children. This is why much of Europe has no future.

Some ‘see’ many moves ahead in a chess game. Others can’t obviously. Some ‘hear’ a melody, tap it out on a keyboard and bring a tune in to this world. Other’s can’t. It’s all about the ability to perceive.

I’ve always believed that those who deny divine providence lack an ability to perceive.

Completely ignore all of history if you wish. Every successful culture has risen with some sort of mainstream religious cohesion as a major component of its success, even if the religion is the state or ideology itself.

Name one society that pulled itself up from nothing with no religious foundation.

Notwithstanding all of the diversionary rhetoric about class oppression, national hegemony, noble savage mythology, and government utopia, our historic first Islamic apostate president can’t help himself from reciprocating in the use of power with an intensity nearly equal to his narcissism, with his attitude of getting even, his pleas for confiscating wealth for redistribution, and his executive orders for extending the tentacles of intrusive bureaucracy beyond any understanding of what the American way of life has stood for.

His concept of might makes right consists of an inversion of power that anyone who lived his boyhood in Indonesia with a mother on her second course of token third-worldism (prior estrangement with the progenitor from a British colony in Africa was apparently only an hors d’oeuvre) would have no idea of how antithetical it is to the spirit of a prosperous, moral, middle class. Gospodi pomilui!

Those interested in understanding a bit more about post-modernism, should take a look at a pretty good primer by Stephen R.C. Hicks: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy: Tempe, AZ 2004).

I think VDH’s essay captures something of the frustration in trying to talk to many “progressives” and also highlights the difference between the liberals, even the fairly left liberals, of the 1950′s – 1970′s in academia, almost all of whom had a respect for truth (even if they didn’t believe in the existence of absolute truth, they understood the importance of trying as hard as possible to come as close as possible to what could be seen as objectively ‘true’) and had intellectual integrity. ‘Tis different now.

It’s going to be a half-century project to take back the universities, in fact it may not work, and the universities may become almost irrelevant, as they were in parts of the 17th and 18th centuries, when virtually none of the important scientific, historical or philosophical work was done in universities – the major exceptions being Kant in Koenigsburg and Smith and the lesser-known Dougald Stewart in Scots universities.

Job one is to clean our political Augean Stables in Washington and the statehouses – the republic will not be secure until the Democrats and progressives are driven out of Washington, but out of the states they have ruined: California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, and perhaps, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington.

Post-modern thought is nothing more than insanity codified. It makes no contribution to society and adds little of value to any serious conversation. Those who adhere to its’ tenets are intellectually vacuous while at the same time appearing to be smart and hip. But peel back the veneer and you’ll find nothing of substance nor anything worthy of consideration.
At best, post-modernism is laughable. Its only real use is as a gage of intelligence: if someone doesn’t believe in it, they’re smart.

Great piece! The underlying narrative (subjective truth) goes essentially like this: every person, culture, race, religion, country, species, idea, any entity in fact, is equally valid, except Western ones, which are uniquely evil. Objective truth, does not exist. Every person is master of his own personal universe which constructs subjective “realities”. Hence, universals (and abstracts) are figments of the imagination (i.e. “the” American, “the” truth), all Western constructs. Words and language (mere soundwaves) have no referents in the real world, but conceal more language and meaning, hence the need to “deconstruct” and “close read”. I’m sure you heard a lot of this insanity over the years in the ivory towers. Climategate was an accident waiting to happen. In essence, we’re in a slow motion train wreck.

Just one little point of order, BattleofthePyramids: you describe a positive, not a negative, feedback loop. In the context of feedback loops, “positive” and “negative” convey no sense of goodness or badness; rather, only whether the feedback accelerates (positive) or inhibits (negative) the system’s initial change.

Unless of course engineering has now also succumbed to the postmodernist asininity Prof. Hanson so ably deconstructs.

All of this ‘postmodern’ stuff is apparently just an ‘educated’ way of saying that the Ends justify the Means, but trys to relieve oneself of the guilt and the charges of hypocrisy. Real folks see it for what it is, as for me- “I’d rather be goverened by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book, than by the faculty of Harvard” etc.

Not another Egghead, Spock, Ivy-league, Lawyer, ‘Victim Group’, Senator, Congressman (Congressperson??) President as long as I live.

Every generation must make its own mistakes, and learn to live with the consequences. I remember Carter, most 2008 voters didn’t. The problem is this, as Reagan (PBUH) said: freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction.

I pray this Republic stands. Many are saying that we’ll undo our current circumstances with the next elections, but that pre-supposes that elections will be held and the results allowed to stand. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Young Westerners everywhere are increasingly indoctrinated into the relativizing “truth” that since all perspectives can be shown to contain biases, then no perspective can be claimed as being “valid.” All relation must reduce to games and/or power struggles.

I generally get good results when I counter with Aristotle’s claim that the best state “is everywhere one and the same,” but that it is the same in a different way that “fire burns everywhere in the same way, whether in Greece or in Persia.”

@Charles Gordon, think of Ghandi’s advice to the British when Hitler threatened them. He told his interlocutor that the British should simply adopt nonviolence. When the other said what would be their fate ? Ghandi said they would be invaded and conquered. But they would know they were moral than the Germans.

When Ghandi’s wife became ill, he advised her to avoid western medicine even if she died, which she did. However, when he developed appendicitis, he quickly hied himself to the British hospital where it was successfully removed.

The nihilistic left may be a source of odd advice but I suspect their 401ks and pensions are carefully invested.

I think the intellectual relativism of postmodernism that is connected to the equally superficial ideology of Evil Western and Male imperialism is an explanation for the support for Obama by the left, the academics, the latte crowd. But I don’t think it explains Obama.

In my view, Obama is not an intellectual. His motive for action rests, not within an ideology, be it postmodernism or socialism. It rests within his own pathological narcissism.

This clinical narcissism, a state that I suggest he moved into as a young boy, moved him into a mode of life where his only reality is, similar to that of postmodernism ==fictional. He is the author of his reality, he controls all who come and participate in his world. This world is one where he is in control of you.

To achieve such control, Obama misinforms; aka, he’s a pathological liar. This is not due to a belief in postmodernism but to a need to control You. He’ll tell you whatever will ensnare you. He’ll change the story with the next person. Rebut him, and as he does when challenged in news conferences – he’ll simply say: ‘you are wrong’. And use his prestige as ‘I’m the President’ to overpower you and the facts.

He’s a master manipulator, entrapping you by emotional means, whether it be the charm of the smile or the threat of a national crisis if you don’t pass His Stimulus Bill without reading it. And assuming that all that’s needed for the Middle East to fall at his feet is for a bow, a speech filled with lies about their scientific greatness and pompous public insults to Israel.

Dare to question him – and he’ll get angry for that is a sign of his weakness, of his loss of ability to control you. It is therefore your misbehavior, your failure to approach him in submission, and he’ll accuse you of ignorance, of partisanship and of course, his most trusted accusation – of racism.

Put a person with a severe clinical case of pathological narcissism in power, and his need to control will increase exponentially. So will his reaction to any dissent or criticism where he MUST force unpopular agendas on the people to maintain his feeling of control.

And if you happen to continue to reject Obama, or even, if you are actually outside of his imperial reach, he’ll consider that you don’t exist. So anyone who really objects to Obama is no longer human – and a narcissist is unable to feel empathy which is why Obama always seems so ‘cool and cerebral’. Heh. He isn’t; he’s unable to feel empathy. But if you are outside Obama’s reach – It’s OK for others to trample you in the mud.

Barack Obama is indeed first, last, and foremost a narcissist. The world is supposed to revolve around him. One strongly suspects that his grandparents spoiled him rotten. The postmodernist ethos suits him well because it primarily only demands an adherence to somewhat nebulous doctrines. Hard work is definitely not required. Only voters inclined toward post-modernism would have voted for such an ill educated man. His aloof coolness and “historical significance” were essentially all that mattered.

I think the problem is even deeper than being spoiled by his grandparents. I think he never had a chance to develop the emotional bonds that provide us with a self. He was shuttled back and forth among people who had their own unresolved problems: Grandfather defies convention and names his daughter Stanley. Mother chooses exotic partners and complains about the Americans with whom her Indonesian husband associates. Father deserts him and Kenyan grandfather angers his grandmother. None of this is a particlarly good basis for developing empathy but it is a fantastic starting point for learning to game people and attract attention to oneself. It is a fantastic starting point for becoming a mirror in which others see their own wishes reflected.

To me the most interesting thing about the Obama saga is that the truth about him has always been right there in front of us. It was obvious all along. And many here saw it plain as day, but sadly still many can’t see. Of course he’s extremely narcissistic, just look at the exaggerated chin raise. Who does that? A classic case of the truth being so close you can’t see it, or refuse to see it. What the Obama presidency tells us about the character of America is not good.

As a Cleric, I note that this same pseudo-philosophy has infected large parts of the once great protestant church. Everyone’s truth is equal to everyone else’s, there is no objective truth, no transcendent reality. There is only many equally valid truths, each bringing their own particular light on the human experience.

What cannot be understood by such ilk is why nobody is paying attention. Want to see the fruit of postmodernism? Look at the dying mainstream liberal churches. Nobody seems to think it is worth the effort to go to church is this pabulum is all there is. Then look at the non-traditional churches. They are growing rapidly, because they have a message and a claim.

As a military Chaplain, however, I see something different. Who is coming forward to serve as chaplains? Those who see a moral imperative in beating the bad guys and serving the cause of human freedom. That supposes that there are enemies who need to be defeated for the good of mankind. Postmodernism doesn’t work so well in this context.

So the postmodern will be ignored, and the world will be shaped by those who feel that there is a cause worth fighting for. Obama is a here-today-gone-tomorrow phenomenon- who will do damage during his tenure, but who will be limited by the vacuity of his philosophy, and soon be shown to be like the toothless and empty rhetorician who preaches to nobody.

@ capt. bob.– Unfortunately, I don’t believe this is so. Having seen the generation behind mine- I’m in my 30s, so I’m talking the late teens going into college here, the amount of deep thought, even the capacity for it, is nill, so the amount of critical introspection is equally nill. These are needed to not buy into postmodernism. Also, we need to consider where post-modernist doctrines have taken root. You speak of the various liberal protestant churches- what about the vast majority of american primary and secondary classrooms? How many educators came through that environment in their universities, bought into it, and now spread it around? What books do we ban and what do we keep? How are we training to teach now? I don’t know these answers, but my guess is it leans a lot more to the postmodernist than not.

Or look at social services majors- people that should (in my opinion) be a secular mirror to the religious ideas of charity, compassion and helping your fellow human. Many (if not all) are in programs that indoctrinate to the very ideas in the above article with the following ideas re-enforced- “no person of color can ever be a racist or even a bigot- only white people are racists (they should work in the food industry sometime…oh my). No white person can understand that just by being white they take all the power from the person of color. Just by being straight you are opressing gays, and supporting the institutions that make their lives difficult.” According to a friend of mine who got a MS in Social work, since I’m white, hetero, and male, I’m pretty much an homophobic, sexist, racist opressor, even if I don’t mean to be, and despite having gay friends, friends of different ethnicities, and treat everyone with the same expectations. This gets spread into the wider community, and is the message that gets passed on to all those teens who haven’t been trained to think critically as they enter college.

A truly delightful article. In the Seventies and Eighties, the masters of postmodernist semantics were feminists. Now the entire Democratic Party rides on the postmodernist band wagon. That fact tells me all I need to know about today’s Democratic Party.

My daughter’s 9th grade history class is debating whether Napoleon upheld or betrayed the ideals of the French Revolution. I like to go over her original source reading material with her, as it can be too subtle and allusive for someone her age. Their reading included a passage from Benjamin Constant’s The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation, from which I excerpted:

“Bonaparte is a thousand times more guilty than those barbarous conquerors who, ruling over barbarians, were by no means at odds with their age. Unlike them, he has chosen barbarism; he has preferred it…his crime lies in this premeditated intention…to rob us of the heritage of all the enlightened generations who have preceded us on this earth. But why have we given him the right to conceive such project?

“When he first arrived here, alone, out of poverty and obscurity, why did we show him a country in which any religious idea was the object of irony? When he listened to what was professed in our circles, why did serious thinkers tell him that man had no other motivation than his own interest? If he discovered easily enough that all the subtle interpretations through which, once the principle had been stated, we sought to elude its implications, were illusory, it was because his instinct was sound and his judgment quick…If in the heart of man there is nothing but interest, tyranny has only to frighten or to seduce him in order to dominate him…”

You summed him up perfectly. The biggest mistake America ever made. This administration, POTUS, the progressives, they all want to deconstruct the nation to fit their warped view of a Utopian world. It will never work. http://newzeal.blogspot.com/

If there is still a persuadable middle in this country — a dubious proposition given our vulgar culture and the ruinous education system — your essay will have effect. If not, it is preaching to the choir. Your readers have sensed what you have expressed with the usual clarity. The left will pour its usual scorn on your words. Their ignorance is as oceanic as their ambitions for us.

Can anyone tell me, what is the deal with right wingers and quotation marks? There is barely a sentence in this pile of slop without them, is it just a gimmick so the author can feel “smarter” or something?

Great article. So, assuming we can get him out in 2012 and repair the considerable damage – it seems to me the more important question – is how is the majority of the country so fooled by him and this horrendous philosophy that they voted for him – will it happen again? Is it being indoctrinated in highschools? Colleges? Do people see it in their kids? We need to attack at the source.

I prefer the term “pre-Islamic” to “postmodern,” because Islam is where we’ll end up, thanks to those morons.

Anyway, thanks for the excellent article, Dr. Hanson. What’s interesting in all this is that it can be criticized from the left. No matter how much the left tries to stick up for Ahmadinejad, he is part of a regime that in the past butchered Iranian leftists after the Shah left Iran. And the Palestinians mistreat women and gays, unlike Israel. Plus, there is no essential difference between Arabs calling themselves Palestinians and those Arabs who are assaulting blacks in Darfur.

By the way, why is the president of Iran referred to here in the West as Ahmadinejad rather than Ahmadi Nejad, which as far as I can see is his actual name?

It might be termed “Postmodernism” but it seems it should be called “Pre-Stone Age!”

Perhaps that’s a bit too much but still that might be where our Great Society is headed. It also seems that with Obama’s fantastic post-racial attitude, our new enlightened foreign policies, our latest emphasis on using our nation’s energy resources (Really, well that’s under consideration, maybe!), and the growing national political consensus (Not in a million years will that happen, perhaps!), we could survive the coming Ice Age with lot’s of luck, most of which has been very bad in recent years.

Wish we had a real backyard, instead of an association common grounds, so we could grow a garden to help us get through this stone age culture that is creeping up on us.

Of course, this might be too pessismtic and maybe we’re only headed for more civil unrest like the 1960s.

Cheers, because the future is so uncertain, as usual, with so much left to our imagination.

Obama, unfortunately is a transformative president. You have done an excellent job detailing the new battle-ground of thought.

As a well educated white American male (by default a member of the hegemony) this article gives me pause. Similarly, the passage of the Health Care Reform Act of 2010, gave me pause. The pause I am referring to is exactly the same as what happens after a truly vicious punch to the solar plexus.

These disruptions are necessary in order to consolidate and focus the mind. Now I am speaking as a member of the American conservative/libertarian community. We must compose our response. Will these changes stand? Will we come to love this new world order? Can we peacefully change these new rules, will we have to learn to live with them, or will we choose to fight against them? If we choose to fight, what will be our choice of weapons?–Words? Ballets? Bullets? How did the Jews react to the Nazi’s in 1934?

How would a modern (or perhaps postmodern) civil war be fought? Asymmetrical warfare? IED’s on the public highways? Targeting public employees? How do you protest the excessive government intrusion into everyday life of an entity that has intruded so much that simple things such as food and gasoline distribution are easily assumed by the authorities? Small arms will not overthrow a government, and high explosives are under tight government control.

How do you establish appropriate limits to ones anger? Where does one go to find a modern day Robert E Lee? Do the states lead the way–If so, which ones? How does one establish the appropriate context for civil dissent, and will dissent even be tolerated by a postmodern president?

Much can be explained by knowing that Obama loves Obama. Narcissism is his core – therefore he believes that anything he says becomes “reality”, and anyone who disagrees is racist and should be punished. He feels entitled in all things including the right to be loved by, and especially by, even the worst of humanity – particularly at the expense of the USA and her allies. He assumes that everyone else can be taken for granted as they are already in love with him. Look no further for your understanding of this “postmodern messiah”. He is a slick version of a psychological pathology. He can’t be cured but the country can be cured by containing and ultimately rejecting him. He will predictably do much harm along the way. Ask any woman unfortunately married to a narcissitic character. Getting disentangled is a painful process But the sooner the better. The country needs to cut it’s losses and save itself.

1. Liberal troll enters board.
2. Liberal troll casts epithet.
3. Liberal troll makes no argument, and indeed, does not know how to make one.
4. Liberal troll returns to pathetic life waiting for next government welfare handout or to celebrate vicarious triumph of some corrupt officials passing pieces of paper that will shred the liberty and prosperity that underwrites his right to troll.
5. Liberal troll and his ilk unwittingly destroy the nation then ask conservatives, “What happened?”
6. Liberal troll takes up prosperous career as shoe-shine for “progressive” apparatchiks.

Perhaps now that the deceit is being revealed, we should question the extent Mr. Obama intends to perpetrate his agenda. Is this “transformation” intended to stop at our water’s edge or does he intend to reshuffle the deck entirely, returning America and its prosperity to the rightful owners of the world? If we are viewed merely as an extension of detestable European imperialism, then Pax Americana must end.

VDH nails the thing as usually, but this time in the process, funny enough, he is accepting some postmodernist silly “new postulates” present in our the current public discourse, like the “correct” description of people’s economic status:

Says he: “trying to force the privileged” -
While I adhere to the notion that all people are born equal and free, I can’t see why this notion should be furthered by society as to create official categories of:
1) “priviledged” (some, who by some unseemly means have more than an official average) and
2) “underpriviledged” who have less than said official average (and this always caused by some form of oppression), and who are owed by the social contract reparations, and the government must to be constantly working in this direction -

Communism 100?
Yup – read the small print always -
As far as VDH… sometimes even old Homer dozes…

“When Limbaugh rails, it is to protect his Gulfstream 550; when Obama ‘distorts,’ it is the expediency needed to wring from the wealthy salvation for the voiceless.”

reminded me of very similar statements found in speeches by Teddy Roosevelt (Who Is a Progressive?) and Woodrow Wilson (What Is Progress?) found in Dr. Ronald Pestritto’s excellent anthology American Progressivism: A Reader.

Among other things, it shows that ‘post-modern’ is older than we sometimes think. (Also, see Dr. Stephen Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism.)

Even knowing in detail the roots of how Progressivism came to dominate American intellectual culture, one can’t help but wonder: Why does anyone buy (or sell) this stuff?

There’s an adage that runs something like “a society that doesn’t believe in God, will believe in anything…”

It’s a problem since you can’t legislate belief in any given thing. And I respect people’s right not to believe in God if that is their choice. But there is an innate desire in men and women to believe in something greater than theselves. So the cynical, the angry and the intellectually careless cling to the meaningless tropes of postmodernism, a belief system that is nihilistic in its essence. There is only one recipe to address this problem over the long term:

1. Be aware of it.
2. Wield power wisely and morally.
3. Retake control of the education system.
4. Instill a sense of pride in our culture of human rights, free expression and meritocracy that has led to so much actual ‘progress’ in human affairs. (Demonstrate by example that reasoning based on objective facts rather than ideological dogma yields tangible benefits.)
5. Expose the incoherence of the left’s post-modern worldview at every turn (even if you can’t ‘win’ the argument per se, most rational people will come to recognize that it is all smoke and mirrors.)
6. Stop buying / watching / listening to post-modern media outlets (starve the beast.)

Given half a chance, common sense usually prevails. It is only when a society is badly disoriented that it falls prey to radicals. This can happen when a culture undergoes explosive change (technological in our case), or when one side drowns out the other because the other doesn’t know how to respond. VDH has exposed the fallacy of post-modernism. Spread the word!

Judging from the level of comments on this thread, a number of you would enjoy, “The Atheist and the God Particle”. It is a scientific analysis of atheism that does not quote the Bible or push Intelligent Design ideas. It analyzes modern science in terms of interpretations of fact. The facts are not in dispute; current interpretations are the problem.

We will never retake the schools by teaching the Bible, but we can based on a modern interpretation of the scientific worldview. It has to start somewhere, and commenters on this thread seem a likely place to start.

Re another comment, I should probably explain that “The God Particle” is the sarcastic name given to the Higgs boson that modern science claims to be the basis of mass in the universe. It is the object of the multi-million dollar search at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. If it is not found (it won’t be) then the modern theory of physics will be seen to based on nonsense, according to several Nobel laureates. In this case a new interpretation of the facts will be needed, and that is explained in “The Atheist and the God Particle”.

This is all a result of the progressive’ attack on traditional western education. All things European (except for their socialist states) have been deemed evil. No longer should we learn about those outdated white Greek philosophers. No longer should we learn about Locke, Montaigne, Paine, Jefferson, etc. etc. What can they teach us about freedom seeing as they are biased white males? We need to eschew the achievements of Beethoven, Mozart, Goethe, Euler, Newton, etc. All white and thus inherently evil. If you are white and male you are an object of ridicule (look at all modern television comedies– all the central buffoons are white males.) Our children are constantly bombarded with this propaganda both in the schools and via the media. All cultures are to be celebrated except the one that gave us America, democracy, and the concept of individual freedom and responsibility. Is it any wonder that Obama is the result?

Thank God for alternate media such as Pajamas Media, and thank God for pundits who are about to put Obama and his ilk in proper perspective! The only way a post-modernist can be elected is through media obfuscation of his real record, as po-mo’s are alien to most thinking Americans. The real enemy is embedded in the Democrat-run press and needs to be smoked out at every opportunity. Imagine if VDH were exposed on all the TV and print news outlets for a week as part of a “narrative of normalcy”. Most people would be saying “right on” afterwards.

Prof, Hanson seems to be having a bourgeoisie reactionary process to the absolute fact that “class is part of the futility of truth,” as Lyotard delineates in non-linear fashion.. Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a Lacanist obscurity that includes reality as a totality.

Debord uses the term ‘capitalist feminism’ to denote the role of the poet as artist. However, the premise of prestructural cultural theory suggests that consensus comes from the collective unconscious, as when Obama was elected. A number of narratives concerning not theory, as posttextual dematerialism suggests, but subtheory exist in the speeches of Pres. Obama. Therefore, Baudrillard uses the term ‘conceptual nihilism’ to denote the bridge between consciousness and class.

Of course the mass of readers in this venue do not have the education or higher developed intellectual capacities of we agants of change do, but the nuance and subtlety is nonetheless, simply marvelous, darling!

For those who don’t appreciate this diatribe, google “The Sokal Hoax” in which Sokal, a physicist, submitted a peer-reviewed article composed of nonsense phrases of this sort and was published in a premiere journal of deconstructionist thought (or lack thereof). It caused quite a scandal, as these people do not like to be seen as absurd.

Thank you Mr. Hanson. I think Francis Schaeffer would be proud to add this as the final chapter of “How Shall We Then Live.”

In Romans 1, God says:

18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Obama’s assault on Israel IS his Iran policy. Look at the March 21st presentation on CNN of Fareed Zakaria’s show, GPS ( Global Public Square ) which is broadcast internationally. The podcast is still available for any who wish to view it.. In the first five minutes Mr. Zakaria , also an editor at Newsweek, exemplifies the attempt to make Israel a dhimmi state. Prior to dialogue with a number of guests Mr. Zakaria offered his “ take “ on the current political climate. Mr. Zakaria posits that Israel is “ not truly serious “ about “ its claims “ that Iran is an “ existential threat “. Why , he asks, does Israel allow “ petty domestic considerations “ to get in the way the possibility of warmer relations with Arab neighbors that also view Iran as a threat? Mr. Zakaria asks why Israels “ motley collection of political parties “ is allowed to get in the way of peace efforts? Mr. Zakaria then, with opprobrium never tossed at an Ahmadinejad or Chavez , calls the Israeli Prime Minister a “ hack “. In short Israel’s security concerns, her capital city, her governmental process, must all be made subservient to maintaining good relations with the one country it will need in order to face Iran. That country of course being the USA. Mr. Zakaria promotes the idea that warmer relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors should be built on a policy of, ” the enemy of my enemy is my friend “. Not a policy based on mutual recognition, human rights, freedom of religious worship, or any other reliable and maintainable standard that leads to true amicable relations between nations. Israel must pay for the privilege of defending Saudi interests with an attack on Iran by making concessions that lead to Israel’s own destruction. A win-win for the Saudis and a lose-lose for Israel. Zakaria represents the Obama approach. It is obvious that for Obama Israel is a dhimmi nation. He spares no attempt to insult and injure Israel and has nothing but contempt for its elected government. He will praise Israel only when it becomes a victim.

The situation today is much like what many of us feared during the late 60′s and early 70′s, to wit -

The ‘flower-children’ and their offspring would someday rule the roost when the adults left the house for a night out and turned the place over to the children, with the admonition that they not invite outsiders in for a party or order pizza for take-out.

We just need for the adults to return and get control of the house and send the children to bed without supper.

Obama he is my man, he shows his anger, to the public he gives no dam.

He is a progressive in every way, killing jobs is how he earns the union’s back deal pay, in action he is a socialist even when he is just simply issuing a stay: he says he for the free, but he is bent on one single deed, providing a permitted May Day for all of America to see.

He oppresses many while calling them every name, then claiming he and his party is the victim, soaking in the more fame, he is very hypocritical in his blame, knowing every time it’s always the same, this is Obama’s favorite game.

He blame’s others like the Tea Party, Insurance, Racist, Big banks, and Israel. Many of us knows his policies have already failed. He shows the signed of being dangerously narcissistic, but our media loves him, as he can fool them into believe he just pessimistic.

He is for big government every time, hurting our economy so we can’t save a dime. He knows the socialism role, will be to take away all our dough. He made a promise not increase the deficit, this promise he knew, to be untrue, but if he created enough civil unrest, he could find some else to have the blame rest, for all his ugly mess, this is where Obama is truly the best.

With government spending billions in waste, I know our government will make it sound great and a honorable place, so they offer money to their cronies in this and every case.

President Obama helps unions gain their dues, no bill is done with out their un-ethical sausage dew. Soon our education system stench will endlessly protrude, and he has no care if you find this rude.

Go Obama, lets have Government take away more freedoms, come on man, you can transform, again claim the public is misinformed. Go Big G, rah rha ree, lets help our government take us to our knees

So our two sides -or rather, universes- are utterly mutually exclusive. We don’t even speak the same language. They cannot convince us, nor can we convince them… of anything whatsoever. So now what? After reading this, I can only think that civil war is unavoidable.

It’s not that we don’t listen. It’s that they don’t answer as they don’t know what they just said. Words without thought are blinding ideology.

They keep repeating in the press that BHO hasn’t had many press conferences. Well, think of it this way. How can he answer questions if he has to respond to what he just said. He usually has no idea what he just said as he was reading it from a script he had never seen before.

Then, you have the example in Maine/NH when he responded to the question about taxes. If that had been a response in a psychological evaluation, he’s have been put in a straitjacket; but, he’s the imperial president and it’s not the words that count as much as who said them. What an incredible state of affairs that the least trusted speaker in the president of the US.

Anne, while you don’t specify which side of the devide you adhere to, and by side I assume you mean liberal vs conservative or as I preferr Right vs Left, I’ll not impune your political views. Approximately 20% of Americans self define as liberal and 40% consevative, a new gallop poll just came out today I believe. There are a couple of articles, still up I believe, at PJ’s that explain the inability of the left to comprehend opposing views. In any case when I write comments I’m not making what I percieve as a pointless attempt to convert or educate leftists. When I write I’m attempting to share my views with conservatives and hopefully influence muddled moderates. While I consider myself a proud member of the VRWC I don’t favor or feel that civil war is likely or desirable. Conservatives only need to persuade 15% of moderates to have a majority. While I believe that the ultimate goal is to utterly eliminate the left as a viable force in American political, social, cultural and economic life. Civil war isn’t necessary and would destroy the institution we desire to preserve and restore.

Here is are quotes from a man considered insane by many, loved by his friends,
feared by his enemies in Government and Media.

Grant stood by me when I was crazy,
and I stood by him when he was drunk,
and now we stand by each other-

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and laborLiberals.
They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon.
The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.

William Tecumseh Sherman
Victorious General,
Grants Army.

Many historians think only the South feared Sherman,
but northern politicians also feared him, his temper, and the ability to raise a quarter million man army with weapons, in one month if he desired.

Sometimes insanity is needed to keep nations from destroying their Constitutions.

VDH: You must have a headache after this effort. Trying to get into the mind of evil can be painful. It really is enough to say; ‘Obama is a liar!’ Of course all effective lies are made up of mostly the truth. Look at the original lie for instance; God said: “for in the day you eat of it (the tree of life) you shall surely die.” The serpent said: “You shall not surely die,” and “but you shall be as gods knowing good an evil”
Did Adam and Eve die? Yes, eventually, and their son Cain was the first murderer so they knew evil and God made clothes for them so they knew good. The truth is a hard thing. So the serpent thought being like a god was something to be desired. God thought being innocent, not knowing evil and long life was most important.
Obama given the opportunity to be godlike has decided that being innocent and good is no virtue and the sins of the few must be paid for by the many and will tell any lie to make it so.
So Doctor Hanson, would it not be better to probe the mind of God before probing the mind of evil?

Dr. Hanson, when you get down to the nut of it, is there essentially any difference between your description of postmodern thought and a description in non-medical terms of the behaviors associated with paranoid schizophrenia?

Just for fun, consider one Skipper who thought it unwise to, as J.E. Dyer observes,” punch holes in the keel.”

Walt Whitman wrote this of Abraham Lincoln:

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Obama’s post-modernism deconstructs itself. For example, Obama may reject America’s special relationship with Britain because it is a vestige of Britain’s former status as a colonial power. However, in rejecting the truth claims that underlie that relationship, he is merely asserting new truth claims that are belied by the relativism of his own post-modernism. Indeed, Obama’s claims are nothing more than naked attempts to establish a new orthodoxy of power relations –one that eschews western values for a troubling third world ethos.

Many of us, tired of ‘postmodernism’ in its many guises, have been waiting for the day when the rubber meets the road — when the postmodernists actually have to DO something.

In academia, postmodernism actually makes a certain amount of sense. If your theory never gets tested against another theory in the real world — if all you have to do is find a way to get it published — then one theory really IS as good as another. It’s when you put them into practice that you find out what works and what doesn’t.

It seems that day has arrived. A postmodernist is now the most powerful man in the world, with (more or less) free reign to do as he pleases. And sure enough, he is being accused left and right — literally — of the most amazing amateurism and naivete, in domestic policy and foreign policy and military strategy and just about everything else.

This will NOT spell the end of postmodernism — it’s too well entrenched, and its practitioners are having too much fun. But perhaps intelligent people will stop taking it so seriously.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

Postscript: I’m reminded of an admonition by Spider Robinson, a writer who describes himself rather emphatically as a liberal. He wrote to beware of postmodernists, and anyone else naming themselves with an oxymoron: “they’re telling you up front that they plan to travel on square wheels”. Words to live by, indeed!

I have a number of high military honors on display on my walls that I had nothing to do with but thankfully the two guys in my family who were awarded them weren’t awarded them posthumously. These guys took an oath to defend our country and they did it, then came back home and in part thanks to their military training fueled the economies not only of America but also of Canada and Great Britain and not-so-indirectly the economies of their former enemies.

If they had known back then what America is like right now, I’m not sure they would have felt that what they did was worth the effort.

When the conservative complains about the illegal alien invasion as a real problem with the rule of law, the post-modern relativist sees the same case as being one of “immigrants” just trying to get a better life for themselves and representing the fact that “America is made up of immigrants.” (Why don’t Canadians cross the border illegally? Answer: They don’t live in a failed country.)

The “illegal” part of the immigration is just thrown out the window.

When the United States loses its rule of law culture, we will be finished.

That’s why Alcee Hastings (“We don’t follow no rules.”) and that Dem hack from IL (“I don’t care about the constitution.”) are so, so dangerous. I can’t recall the later’s name, but he is a fat, white guy in the House.

The irony here is Pres. Obama not only taught law, but graduated from the greatest law school the world has ever seen!

An excellent read. It shows us the seriousness of the situation we’re in with Obama and in society in general.

The question is what do we do about it? I’m afraid that since this is the mindset of Obama and not just things he does, that there’s not much we can do about it. This is his reality, and nothing will shake him from it – even if it means he destroys this country.

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.
But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten.
With their seed shall continuously remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant.
Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes.
Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth
for evermore.
The people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will shew forth their praise.
Ecclesiasticus, Chapter 44

I’m not sure he is a great example of all this either. He’d mix a healthy dose of history in
with his arguments (ie, they were not gibberish). He often had interesting points, even if I did
not buy his overall view of things.

Nice, informative article. Let’s see a similar ‘analysis’ of former President Bush. Deconstruct his relationships with wealthy Saudis, the Saudi bankrolling of global Islamic radicalism (and Al Qaeda) and the choice to go to war with Iraq.

Not gonna happen X. The right wingers have their convenient “Whipping Boy” in Obama. McCain or Palin would be carrying out the same foreign policy albeit not quite as subtly. And as far as the “insane” Uncle Billy goes – here is a quote from his buddy US Grant.

“There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.”

Under the subsection about radicalism I have noticed a Clinton-esque quality to the debate. It is a semantic debate like Clinton’s understand of what “is” means. If you redefine radical to mean something other than what 99% of us take it to mean.

Only an affluent society has the luxury of indulging in such destructive tinkering with the very foundations that made it affluent. There’s an old saying I used to use with my soldiers “Anyone can be a sunshine soldier but adversity is the true test of one’s character” The most destructive, activist liberals among us haven’t suffered any adversity. They bask in the comfort of what previous generations have bestowed upon them – and scoff at it and undermine it with all their might. I find it instructive that the real malevolence towards this country does not come from the truly poor or the so called ‘working classes. It comes from the most spoled, rich and affluent among us. I despise people who don’t have the God given common sense to appreciate and value what they’ve been given. Clearly injustice should be fought but one needs wisdom to have the perspective and clarity of mind to differentiate between life’s unfairness and the opportunities that that same life provides to overcome it. The left has none of that. Only a wanton, childish destructiveness, tearing down everything that doesn’t meet their instant approval.

Only an affluent society can afford to indulge in the tinkering that the Left is doing with the very foundations that made it affluent. I used to have a saying for my soldiers “Anyone can be a sunshine soldier but adversity is the true test of one’s character”. Th Left has suffered no adversity, taking for granted and undermining the hard work and sacrifice that previous generations have bestowed upon them. I find it illustrative that this undermining comes not from the truly poor – the so-called ‘working class’ – but from the most spoiled and indulged among us. I despise people that don’t have the God given common sense to appreciate and respect what’s been given them. Surely, injustice must be fought but it takes wisdom to maintain perspective and the clarity of thought to differentiate between life’s inherent unfairness and the opportunity that our system provides to overcome that unfairness. The Left is a spoiled, petulant child, threatening to overturn the most benevolent, tolerant society history has ever known – even with all its warts – in it’s race to indulge it’s own self righteous pieties. It is time for the adults to take this country back.

More essential VDH. I hope this diagnosis will be followed up by a suggested course of treatment.

One thing that still baffles me is the unholy alliance between Po-Mos and radical islam. How is it that leftists, even in their weakened mental state, can ally with misogynistic, homophobic, racist, anti-semitic savages like Hamas or Hezbollah? Bizarre.

Whenever I become depressed over what I view as the inevitable decline of the West…down the toilet bowl of Leftism/socialsim/relativism, I cheer myself up by thinking about the East. Whether it’s China, or Japana, or India…doesn’t really mattter. I cheer myself up by realizing that the East is a fundamentally different culture and is more or less immune from the absurdism that has grabbed control of the intellectual West. I’m cheered by the thought that once the West is in final decline, the East will run the world in a ruthless and pragmatic manner, utterly immune from the ideological insanity that controls the Western Left.

President Obama was just at the Washington Nationals home opener to throw out the first pitch. At the last minute, while on the field, he took off the Nationals hat and put on a White Sox hat and then proceeded to throw out the first pitch.

“Post-modernism” is simply the latest mask of the good old subversion: it’s stalinism for your SOUL, it sends your spirit to the Siberia of stupidity forever.
Our good Professor rightly identifies NIHILISM as the root of “post-modernism” and nihilism is the root of every subversion.
After the century of the communist massacres, that condemned to poverty and starvation hundreds of millions of people and killed, tortured, and deported tens and tens of millions, the subversives could no longer present themselves in the public arena without the risk of being lynched.
So they have adopted another pseudo-cultural mask (I mean after the pseudo-culture of “marxism”).
The goal remains the same: chaos and evil.
And they are doing pretty good: they are destroying the economy, making life easy for the islamic terrorists here in America, projecting ghosts of class-warfare as the new “culture” of the Country.
And large masses of demons faithfully follow them.

Let’s pray.
Let’s study.
Let’s work hard to roll back the regime of folly that the subversives are building.

So, the Obama Doctrine starts with an “ad hominem” argument at its core and then presents reality “as it should be” rather than as it is.

Of course Rush and Beck have said all those nasty things they accuse! Riotous Tea Partiers throw racial slurs at rallies! And if the left is presented with inconvenient “facts” that indicate otherwise, just remember that “they” don’t understand reality as is should be, and the left knows that they WOULD have said and done those things, and that’s just as bad.

The administration must then rely on the ends justifying the means, since their opponents really aren’t playing by the correct rules anyway. None of their ‘facts’ matter if they’re fundamentally wrong about the world and the way it should be.

How does one oppose that? If the left doesn’t believe in conventional reality and facts, you can’t use them to refute their position.

A truly brilliant effort at establishing a “straw man” argument and then proceeding to destroy it.

At the very outset, it seems strange and odd that a “historian” would pronounce analyses and conclusions based on observations of ONE YEAR of Obama in a history of 200 plus years of the USA.

What is unclear is the content/substance of all that you would articulate as preferable to the “Post-modernism” of Obama.

Obviously, generally, if it is relativism “moral, legal, ethical, political etc” that you are railing against, then perhaps you would care to explain what terminology/description, other than “post-modernism” best describes “selling arms for hostages” or supporting the Shahs, the Saddams, the Taliban for decades, or outing a CIA agent, or african americans being only 3/5th human, or rendition or
Abu Ghraib..

Have you considered the possibility that it is actually your view of “truth” and “reality” that fits the label and description of “post-modern” more accurately? and that perhaps Obama is the one attempting to address issues based on some real hard truth and facts and YES, absolutes:?

Of course any scholar of any discipline can analyze the policies and perspective of a president and a government. You are surely not declaring that IF one is a historian, THEN one cannot analyze or critique any such until several hundred years have passed.

Equally, your red herring tactic of declaring that UNLESS one also criticizes what YOU consider worthy of critique in another government and another president, THEN one has no right to criticize Obama – is an invalid tactic.

You obviously don’t understand relativism and ignore the misinformation, blatant manipulation of facts and emotions, disrespect for Congress and due process of Obama. Your conclusion that Obama deals with facts, hard truth and ‘absolutes’ is without evidence.

With respect to the head of the political leadership of government elected by the consent of the governed, in our country, POTUS, it is expected that he defend the interests of the nation.

It is expected that a natural born Citizen, the sine qua non constitutional eligibility for POTUS, instinctively extends our national interest abroad with support for our most steadfast allies, Great Britain and Israel; not bow to Saudi Royalty; not tear down the central European defense protection against Russian threats; not acquiesce to the acquisition of nuclear arms by the Iranian rulers who believe in the eschatology of the 12th Imam; and not support banana republic dictators like an aspirant on the waiting list to join their ignoble club.

It is expected of an informed citizenry to know that torture consists of broken bones, not posing for photos; the battlefield overseas is not the jurisdiction of domestic criminal law; the 3/5 rule diminished the influence of the South; Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source who revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame; and socialists always cynically blame their adversaries for using the dissembling tactics they use to protect themselves from their own pusillanimity.

THANKS FOR CONTINUING TO EDUCATE US ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS (AND THROUGH A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY; A DIRE HINT OF WHAT’S TO COME) EVER SINCE BHO BECAME POTUS. THE SCARY THING IS THAT THESE ARE REALLY AND “TRULILY” GETTING UGLIER AS YOU SPAKE.

AT THIS TIME, ONLY THE SENSITIVE MEMBERS OF THE HERD (STILL VERY FEW AND CAN’T CAUSE A STAMPEDE YET) ARE ABLE TO SMELL “SOMETHING EVIL” AND ‘TIS ONLY NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY SOME FOLKS HAVE THAT WOEBEGONE LOOK ON THEIR FACES. THEY KNOW “SOMETHING” AND ARE SCARED SHITLESS; IF YOU GET MY DRIFT.

EVEN SO, THE CLOCK IS A-TICKIN’ AND PERCHANCE MOST OF US ARE MERRILY AND BLISSFULLY ON OUR WAY TOWARDS THE BRINK OF THE NIAGARA ABYSS. WAKE UP !!!ANTI-CHRIST OR NOT, BHO IS POWERFUL BEYOND COMPREHENSION AND IS CAPABLE OF UNIMAGINABLE DAMAGE; BELIEVE YOU ME!! I HATE TO SAY THIS, BUT IF WE LOSE THIS HERE STRUGGLE, THE ONLY DESOLATE SCENARIO WE’LL SADLY BEHOLD IS: THE ABSOLUTE AND UTTER GOTTERDAMMERUNG OF THE LATE GREAT U. S. OF A. I KID THEE NOT !!!!!!!

I can see the frustrations that Victor and others may have with some aspects of postmodern relativism, but I think that this article makes some big assumptions. The largest is, of course, the assumption that relativists see all truths as equally valid. I don’t think this is the case. There is a big difference between acknowledging the existence of multiple truths, and considering them all equally valid. Whether Victor likes it or not, postmodernism is very well established and we live on the other side of the relativist divide. It really is just a side effect of Western civilization becoming more multicultural, which I’m sure some on this board see as a horrifying development. But it has already happened folks. Railing against it is just being a cranky reactionary. 100 years ago when universities were filled with people with similar values and upbringings, this wasn’t an issue in academia. Now that our universities serve people of many different backgrounds, it is impossible to not acknowledge the existence of more than one way of seeing the world. BTW it is not always anti-western or anti-American, as Victor seems to assume as well.

Postmodernism may be well-established but that doesn’t mean that it has any value in academic analysis or research. It is a perspective and is incapable of analysis or evaluation.

There is no difference between acknowledging ‘multiple truths’ and considering them as ‘equally valid’. The two phrases are identical in meaning. Furthermore, postmodernism has nothing to do with multiculturalism.

Criticizing postmodernism is not being a ‘cranky reactionary’ but instead, is a rational act demanding that our interaction with our world be based on objective facts, on analysis based on these facts and the use of logic…rather than the postmodern rejection of objective facts, of reason, of logic…and its insistence instead on subjective solipsistic perception, essentialist a prior forces and a focus on emotion rather than reason.

There is only one valid way of seeing the world, which is the use of objective data based empiricism and the use of reason and logic. The use of these attributes, which are found in all ‘ethnicities’ will always lead to the same conclusion, whether it be the nature of a hydrogen atom or the value of freedom of speech or the morality of human life.

Sherab – “The goal remains the same: chaos and evil.”
I don’t believe it’s their intention even if it’s the normal result. They really, really want to make the world into a better place. They believe that communism would work fine if we were all just better at being communists. Dang humans!

I wonder why you consider President Obama to be the first post-modern president? Would not former President George W. Bush have been an apt contender for such a title? Did not President Bush use dubious legislative tactics such as reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts, or is the infamous reconciliation maneuver only post-modern when it is used for bills advanced by the Democratic party? You suggest that President Obama is operating under a post-modern mindset by supporting bills that lead to deficit spending such as the stimulus or the recent health care reform law. But wasn’t this recent practice of deficit spending begun by President Bush’s presidency when his administration inherited a budget surplus from the Clinton administration and turned it into a budget deficit? It wasn’t due to a post-modern mindset that under President Bush’s watch, the national debt doubled during his administration? Perhaps it is post-modern to spend money you don’t have or to spend money on entitlements, but then ought we not to consider the one trillion dollar prescription drug bill that President Bush signed into law (which is about the same dollar value as the current health care reform law) as indicative of a post-modern mindset? Or what about all the lies, corruption scandals, and cover-ups from the previous administration? When President Bush ignored evidence to the contrary and insisted that we invade Iraq because they were harbouring weapons of mass destruction, was not this an example of using relative truths to justify his administration’s agenda? Or what about the Scooter Libby scandal or the politicization of the justice department? Were not these also examples of defining reality to be what is politically expedient for it to be? Or did these things simply not happen? I suppose that if one were to deny that all of these things occurred under the previous administration, then that would exempt President Bush from being considered a post-modern president, but then would not such redefinitions of reality not also be the workings of a post-modern reasoning process? You state that post-modernists fail to study history for its perceived irrelevance, but if we evaluate President Obama’s presidency thus far without recalling history in respect to President Bush, are we not committing just such a logical fallacy?

On a side note, you argue that liberal economic policies are post-modernist in their rationale, but before we write such policies off as illogical or somehow immoral, perhaps we should consider some of the economic polices that God gave to the nation of Israel after they had left Egypt. Weren’t debts canceled every seven years? Weren’t land claims returned to the original distribution every fifty years during the year of jubilee? Wouldn’t this kind of policy have been very unfair to capitalists? These policies seem pretty relativistic to me. Was God being a post-modernist?

“However, our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you’d think that the 1980′s were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there”
- Ronald Reagan

At the moment, on Drudge, there’s an interesting diamond-shaped pattern of photos. On the left there’s Obama, in mid-spiel, emiting his jetstream of parsed phrases defending and obscuring what he’s doing to American (and freeworld) stability and permanence. At the top is Hillary, having a lollipop while the text below tolls in bulletpoint the utter mess she’s making of our foreign policy. On the right march two oil-price engorged tyrants, one eastern and one western hemispheric, inspecting their swelling and intertwining militaries, and both the direct beneficiaries of the no-energy-production-in-USA shadow policy of the party of the left and top of the diamond. And at the bottom of the diamond, one might say where the rubber meets the road, is the only face among the five wearing any semblance of an expression of honest decency, that of General David Petraeus.

If any term lacks real definition, it most definitely is “postmodernism”. Sometimes certain important principles emerge and as they do, various ideologically oriented interests attempt to take them over by adapting them into their own narrative. The term describing the “new principle” then simply becomes a new term for something old, and the principle its self withers away. This is what happened to the principle and term of “liberalism”.

Without going on too long, or digging too deep here, postmodernism was conceived in the early 20th century and existed in a fetal state, within modernism, until the end of the 20th century when it actually began to emerge. Upon its emergence it was essentially kidnapped by the old, old, Left and there it has remained hostage.

What postmodern is, is really just a reconciliation of empiricism and phenomenology as epistemologies. To me, it is an attempt to reconcile the core principles of the Enlightenment with everything we have learned since.

Look at relativism and multiculturalism. The BIG catalysts aren’t always social or political, the social and political are usually just side-affects of the deeply scientific (philosophic) Relativism is huge. Its as HUGE as Einsteins General Theory. How is multiculturalism or cultural relativity AT ALL necessarily derived from relativity? Simply, they are NOT. They are imaginings. The left of the day seized mightily on General Relativity and directed its natural growth into the social sciences, directed that growth to their own ends. We WILL see the same thing happen with Emergence Theory if we ourselves do not actively keep the greedy little hands of leftist academic zealots away from its natural growth through the sciences.

Lets think about relativity in cultural terms. Cultures, Nations, are relative to each other, but in what way? Primarily they are relative in that each is evolved to orient around its own best interests as a culture, or a Nation. In practical terms it means the orientation of incredibly important institutions such as language, law, morality, and general tradition around a set of core principles that make the Nation in question its self. The goal being the continuance of the Nation, and the development and emergence of all National institutions being oriented around that goal. Multiculturalism is not multiculturalism (thanks Foucault), it is simply the attempt to develop the institutions of a Nation (which is ‘not a nation’) within the western Nations of the world. The recognition of that fact through the above critical process is not “right wing thinking”, friends, it is postmodern thinking.

Yes we will continue to develop and grow as a Nation, our core principles will continue to evolve. But if we do not aggressively protect this organic growth from those who would force it in ANY artificial direction, to any ends, we will find that our great National organism is full of cancerous tumors. We will find ourselves without OUR Nation, but within a foreign Nation (that “is not a Nation”), but on the same soil that contains the tears, blood and bones of our fathers and grandfathers.

We HAD The Enlightenment in America, and yet allowed the “enlightened despots” of continental Europe to take over the meaning, direction and influence of Enlightenment Principles, we HAD Classic Liberalism in America and yet allowed the Left (essentially the same statist “Enlightened Absolutists”) to direct the influence and meaning of the movement, and now we have things like “Postmodernmism” and “Emergence Theory”, and as the above article illustrates, we are allowing the same band of fools to take over these meanings, the direction and influence of these movements. When will enough be enough?

We HAD The Enlightenment in America, and yet allowed the “enlightened despots” of continental Europe to take over the meaning, direction and influence of Enlightenment Principles, we HAD Classic Liberalism in America and yet allowed the Left (essentially the same statist “Enlightened Absolutists”) to direct the influence and meaning of the movement, and now we have things like “Postmodernmism” and “Emergence Theory”, and as the above article illustrates, we are allowing the same band of fools to take over these meanings, the direction and influence of these movements. When will enough be enough?

ah if you’d just not learn how to read, and you would still be innocent !

Yes, it is that simple on one front, on another front philosophic movements predicate political movements. My point simply being that we need to have more of a hand in shaping the transition from the philosophic to the political and that transition point is academia which is full of all kinds of isms.

From my point of view Obama is enacting traditional Democratic Party positions. Since the American people practically cripplied the Republican party the Democrats are now able to take the ideas of such as Robert P. Reich, Lester Thurow, Andrea Tyson. More recently I have to include John Kenneth Galbraith’s son, James K. Galbraith. Read his new book The Predator State. He calls for Planning, wage and price controls, income redistribution and much more Mercantilist nonsense. Even more surprising is that the cover says that such economists as Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz, Robert P. Reich, and the non-economist Michael Lind recommend the book on the back cover. These people suppose that it’s possible to get rid of the free market. The fact is that it is impossible. The Soviets tried it. They got rid of their civilization instead. The final stage of Communism is the “free market”.

It’s a good article in that it facilitates having a logical and rational argument. What I found disappointing is that the final 3 or 4 paragraphs reveal the author’s political ideology and insufficient intellectual objectivity. The proof of this is the author’s lack of any references to the Bush’s presidency and Bush’s equally troublesome personality disorder (another variation of a narcissistic type but without Obama’s ability to manipulate and give a false image of competency.

You mean hardcore Postmodernists like F.A. Hayek who is one of the founding fathers of contemporary conservatism and who’s economic principles we use to counter the rotten Keynesian system? This is an example why I say “Constitutionalists” are yet again being duped by The Left: Keynes is modernist in the strictest sense, it is our Governments adherence to Keynesian economics that is and has been responsible for our massive economic problems. Yet as Hayek fades from our memories and his influence wanes to nothingness, we allow The Left to take hold of emerging schools of thought (like postmodernism) and fill them with nothing (literally distropian nihilism), where really, if left alone, they would become contemporary articulations of thinkers such as Hayek. It is a sickening trend.

Really, the only context in which most anything Obama has done or said makes any sense at all.

Obama needs to be challenged regularly on the validity of the worldview he has carefully constructed. Some of the people he has coddled (e.g. Iranians, Russians) finding him “soft” doesn’t seem to get through. Chavez dissing him, the Saudis unimpressed with his obeisance, didn’t seem to penetrate.

The woman over the weekend, however, mentioning that we’re already substantially over-taxed seemed to throw him for a loop, into a tizzy and a 17 minute defensive ramble.

Reality is not allowed to intervene in the postmodern world, and when it does penetrate, ever so slightly, the results are…interesting to behold.

I have commented many times on how amazed I am at how much you can lie to Democratic voters. This article explains why Democrats love liars and constantly elect them. But I wont. It’s not ok for the poor to steal or for a black man to be a bigot. Wrong is wrong. Social relativism my fanny.

And how much grant money are you going to get if you say the atmosphere is fine?

In academic organic chemistry labs synthetic chemists always put in a grant application that the series of compounds they want to make are active against cancer cells. But no industrial medicinal chemist would touch them because they are usually against ALL cell lines.

So my research will cure cancer give me money. Atmospheric chemists have let this kind of thing get out of hand. And your a fool to believe them.

So, we now have a polite label (postmodernism) for the asininity that is Obama. The labeling adds nothing and solves nothing. Obama’s attitudes and actions are just as harmful whether they stem from rationalized postmodernism, stupidity, or evilness. The important question is whether responsible citizens can do anything about the failures of our governments and the irresponsibilities of our politicians and non-elected government officials. With the majority of the population grubbing for government goodies and the mainstream media mostly supporting bigger government, I don’t see how us few dissenters can fix things.

There are too few real conservatives to matter. Fewer than twenty percent of voters are either true conservatives or libertarians. Most of the people who call themselves conservatives are feeding at government troughs and demanding better swill. They differ from the socialistic democrats only in how to select who gets to pig out at which troughs.

It is difficult to find an accurate label for Obama, but the ‘postmodernist’ term applies to Obama because he does not seem to enjoy knowledge of history. Instead, Obama appears to be at war with history: what he has described as the failure of government (Washington), individuals (Bush, etc…), and large portions of society (bankers, health insurers, the wealthy, etc…)

How can Obama learn from history when he views it in such low esteem? If history is not valuable to him, then what is? Unfortunately, we may know too little about Obama’s values to answer these questions.

There are obvious contradictions between his rhetoric and his public behavior that suggest his values are not what meets the eye. Why would someone as ‘erudite’ as the Harvard grad Obama choose to associate with his constituents by advertising his picks for the ‘March Madness’ title? If he truly enjoyed brandishing an intelligent persona (‘smart power’), shouldn’t his comfort zone encompass topics other than popular culture? Why does he risk comparisons with Bush when associating with the ‘common’ man, when Bush had a genuine (more than casual) interest in sports?

The conclusion, as you have discussed in your article, is that Obama is missing a wide range of analytical abilities. Obama is missing the ability to realistically compare himself with others. Others around him (‘his handlers’) necessarily have a different perspective than Obama and try to mitigate the consequences of Obama’s selective blindness. Obama himself is unable to recognize that his own behavior is self-contradictory and that he is very much like others in history who preceded him, and that he shares with them many of their detestable qualities.

This type of short-sightedness would typically be caused by an inferiority complex, or by ignorance. My guess is that Obama has a combination of both attributes; he feels inferior to others and tries to compensate for it, and that he ignorantly chooses not to analyze himself in the same light he analyzes others.

It seems almost too basic, but it fits the bill. The postmodern characterization is an extension of the deeper character flaws. The next question is does Obama have the courage to change? The answer is decidedly no. He has declined change at every opportunity. The greater irony is that Obama resists change, and there is nothing to learn from his postmodern ideology.

here’s two classics –along the same lines as Prof. Hanson’s essay here but from slightly different angles. VDH readers won’t need them but my thought is, you the reader might have a few folks –family, friends whatever –to whom you would not have presumed to send this sort of material a year ago, because you knew they’d've scoffed and backed themselves even deeper into the fever swamps. Maybe now they’re ready to start trying to find the way back out. A nice triptych here.

It’s amusing that post-modernism is embraced by marxists, although it was invented largely by fascists and fascist collaborators. (For some cruel entertainment, repeat that in a faculty gathering and watch the professors have coronaries.)

Well, except that fascists tend to be blood-and-soil nationalists while Marxists hymn the Internationale, what’s the difference between the two? Same tyrannical impulse in each, same antinomian rant about the ends justifying the means.

This is by far one of the most pretentious articles I have ever read in a long time. Not only does it make horrible misconceptions about what post-modernism really is, like thinking that post-modernism is by itself a unitary ideology, when its in fact, a very ambiguos term that defines a broad spectrum of thinkers. It also confuses some of its ideas, like thinking that post-modernism authors propose an ethical or moral way of life, when it is in many cases, simply an epistemological perspective. This is something that conservatives or people afraid of this ideology use to somehow make the argument that post-modernism leads you to a nihilistic society, which (LOL) ultimately comits suicide. Nothing could be more anti-intelectual and misleading in this article.

But the worst part of this is that it does all this just to propose that Obama is a guy that hates history , hates Amurika, hates the good conservative spirits that helped our ancestors prosper, etc. Like if analyzing the personality of Obama, saying he is a narcist, somehow ment something about his policies. This will convince dumb opposers of Obama, it will give them more reasons to hate the guy, but in the end, its nothing meaningful. Its intelectual demagogy.

There is plenty of good reasons to oppose Obama, its perfectly reasonable to think that lower taxes are a better economic policy, that increasing the welfare state will lead to a more rigid economy, etc. Creating such rethorical garbage just to make a statement of Obama supposed philosophy that undermines his view of the world and is basically anti-life, anti-conservative, anti-reason, and anti-american, is a empty mental exercise, its anti-intelectual and offensive. It just hurts the discussion and makes politics a lot more fragmentated to create such a demagogic, pretentious, and misleading garbage.

In UK in 19th century the intellecual elite had defined what would become the anglo-saxon capitalist society, that no revolutions were necessary, just influence of intellecutal in the different strates of the society. It happears that Obama was on the wave of fabianists that prepeared him the ground for such a long time. I can’t see that this is continental Europe marxism, as you mostly reject our litterature and economists. The Russians marxists might have tried to destabilise your society, but because of your resistance to continental Europe influence, they were relegated to mostly spying your defense secrets, while the desease came from the inside, anglo-saxon litterators made it quite easily.

“Fabian socialism differed from the current Marxian socialism not only in
doctrine but still more in spirit and in its conception of the influences
making for socialism. At bottom what matters in Marx is not his theory
of value but his emphasis on the class struggle as the sole effective
instrument of progress. Marx believes that socialism will come not only
because it is a better system than capitalism but because there is behind
it a rising class led by economic conditions to achieve it. Fabian
literature, on the other hand, seems often to be unconscious of the
relevance of class distinctions and shows no belief at all in a class
struggle as the instrument of change. The Fabians are essentially
rationalists, seeking to convince men by logical argument that socialism
is desirable and offering their arguments to all men without regard to the
classes to which they belong. They seem to believe that if only they can
demonstrate that socialism will make for greater efficiency and a greater
sum of human happiness the demonstration is bound to prevail.”

We could have a discussion on whether Obama is postmodern or not. But, why bother? It’s become obvious that he truly is the mentally lazy (anti-)intellectual his colleagues at U Chicago say he is, regardless of what “ism” you attach to his “philosophy”.

Postmodern has become a convention for something on the order of “post empirical” or “post-tested-against-reality” thinking. Unfortunately for the Left, who adhere to this sloppy way of cogitating, all mental “constructs” (VDH’s word) are eventually reality-tested.

Like it or not, that will happen to Obama’s ideas as well. Since it’s sort of a Darwinian thing, you’d think the Left would understand this simple truth. In the natural world, the empirical world, ie. the real world, reality does not countenance such stupidity as postmodernism for long. It will be tested, and failure will bring consequences

Ironic that the prototypical Leftist bumper sticker tells us, “Reality Bites”. They have no idea how true that is. With Obama and the Dems in control of our future, we’re about to find out.

I read the article and was struck by the thought that it could be published on any liberal website and elicit many a “right on!” The writing style was so perfectly done that the irony would be entirely missed!

I don’t give a rat’s tail about the what word you apply to the mental processes of the left, call it “glibbleoxificnation” if you like, but I think Mr. Hanson got it all down pat.

It would be interesting to know if he felt dizzy and had to lie down when he was done. :)

Victor Davis Hanson has my gratitude for this article. Its high time that those who have given Obama the benefit of the doubt regarding his constant self-contradictions realize that we are close to the dead-end of the Orwellian world of “freedom is slavery,” (I don’t know whether that is an exact quote) and the attempt to defend individual rights is racism! People who have reached this stage of sabotaging their thinking process are to be pitied; unfortunately, they seem to have power over our lives.

Look, socialism as it truly exists, not as it is advertised, is the chosen method for the enslavement of the whole human race for the benefit of the power elite who will sit atop the pyramid. Obama is a NPD suffering puppet, nothing more.

Postmodernism didn’t appear in a vacuum or by accident. It is part of a structured Marxist (or really League of Just Men aka Illuminati) takeover.

Believe it or not as you please, but there’s more proof of it than of gravity having an associated waveparticle!

I would venture a general comment on the state of the Obama project. During the election, it was an iron rule in the Obama camp to avoid assiduously any reference to race. Race was not an issue, and the election result, to our credit, proved it. Now, suddenly, racism emerges as a line of defense among Obama adulators alarmed by the reversal of public sentiment (as reflected in the polls).

Why is this? It is because charges of racism are the last resort of the desperate. This emergence of what has come to be known as “the race card” is proof that the true believers are getting rattled. It is a sign of weakness on their part, an ignoble– and incorrect– defense of the indefensible.

Do you see then why it is important to understand the ‘construct’ they are calling postmodernism? The idea “Post-Racial” really means more racial than ever before. The hard-left postmodern playbook clearly states that postmodernism includes highly exaggerated themes of modernism. So if a hard-left ‘postmodernist’ tells you that the Obama admin. is post-partisan, it really means it is attempting to be more partisan than anything that happened in the past century. The “post” in postmodernism hardly means “after” or “beyond”, really it means “more like modernism than even modernism was”. A twisty road, but at the top it is obvious that The Left are more conservative in terms of being anachronistic than the most hardline rightwinger ever could hope to be.

In light of this afternoon’s administration announcements on changes in strategic defense policy, for those who can stand a little more smoke pouring out your ears, swallow hard and read the fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs of “The Final Treaty”.

Looking back to the the heyday of the Greeks and their conflicts, what is different now? How should our ideological struggles be settled differently now? I suggest that history simply repeats itself and that we should sort it out the old way. We are still the same human beings as the Athenians and the Spartans, or Hesiod vs Socrates, etc.

VDH, I can tell that there’s a reality that you don’t want to hear! This post is based on your editors deleting my previous post! I believe history will repeat itself regardless (whether I am published here or not)!

Observing reality is a useful thing. Note, first, that both this comment and the previous one were published. Then go up and read the comment moderation policy. Many of the editors live in time zones to the east of PJM; late at night, it can take some time for a comment to be moderated and published.

Can’t get enough of the line of thinking that this article has set off. Thank you VDH!

Because it really lacks any kind of definition, let us say that it is this: PostModernism is the journey from traditional conservative worldview, through all other possible worldviews- not only giving each of the others their chance, but embracing them at the core; it is taking that journey without a definite destination and still naturally arriving back at the same point you started.

Modern: There is something wrong with the way we are and the way we have done things, we feel a little guilty about this nagging feeling so we will nurse our conscience by being magnanimous to those Nation-States, cultures and peoples who are below us.

PostModern: There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way we are and the way we have done things to arrive at this point. Even the suggestion of a feeling of guilt is entirely eliminated because we have thoroughly examined ourselves through the eyes of others and have tried and tested opposing viewpoints. Other groups deserve not our arrogant magnanimity, but our Leadership if they so choose to follow us, and in following us emulate our example, an example of accountability and independence as opposed to blame and dependency.

Sorry, had to ad this and if it can be consolidated with the above post, that would be peachy.

The last thing I really want to say about this is the right simply cannot afford to continue to sit on the %$@* sidelines while The Left remains on the supposed cutting edge. Every ‘right wing’ pioneering thinker after The Enlightenment has had to pronounce his or her independence from the ‘conservative movement’ in order to be taken seriously by anyone, including conservatives.

Victory will only come when what everyone here would agree are “Constitutionally sound, conservative” principles are articulated in ways that are on the very cutting edge. I can only wonder how many people who call themselves conservatives are aware of the growing body of evidence that gravity is an emergent phenomenon. This is a huge step towards a unification of Einsteins General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Theory.

Do you realize what that means? It means the empirical evidence which predicates 90% of leftist dogma is slowly being fed into the grinder. What “conservative” is on top of this? This is the kind of occasional breaking wave that shapes transitions of civilization from one stage to the next and yet the best “we” can come up with is that Obama is a postmodern president and that relativism is stupid. Come on!

post-modernism is simply a construct itself: conservative ideas can NEVER win. PM is pre-cursor to communist rule, THEN there will be truth & values again. truth & values of statist control. did anyone try to tell stalin or hitler that their ideas were just one among many valid values? There is no post-modernist theories or theorists in a statist society.

This is clearly the attitude I am talking about. Conservative ideas really will never win because conservatives paint every new idea as being in opposition to what they believe, leaving a negative vacuum to be filled by everything that wants to be anti-conservative. What is so attractive about allowing others to seize the initiative and take over every new principle or idea that comes into being? If “conservative ideas” fail, it is not due to their lack of inherent truth, it is due to the lack of initiative on the part of conservatives to forge the way forward themselves.

That’s been my impression of the whole postmodernist phenomenon. To put it glibly, a bunch of French intellectuals saw that their high culture and advanced technology were capable of extremes of folly and barbarism, and they never got over it. They decided that nothing makes sense, and today’s philosophical atmosphere is the result.

I will add one more thing (assuming the other post makes it through): a logical proposition which cannot be contradicted is to thinking what a hypothesis which cannot be disproven is to science: a perversion of the method.

If you are unable to achieve sufficient coherence that “Not-X” is an intelligible proposition, then you have failed.

America and Americans must recognize sooner or later that the BHO’s can give us nothing that we need, other than false promises–like thieves in the night however they will steal all, even our lives–eventually to maintain control when they run out of your money and capital–to distribute the wealth.

They must fix blame as all communists, Marxists and socialists, all idiot academics, have done when their Utopian words emerge as they must to be be subversive and fraudulent rationalizations; code words for mind control and revolution.

The needed Class warfare to implement their plans will then be more than words. It will be killings. Look to the past—is this not so?

Come to your senses Americans, do not let what is happening in America go past the next elections. Vote for real Americans as defined by the founding fathers, western culture and christian thought. Proven “ideas” that created the high water mark of human culture in the world. Do not let this light go out.

It is refreshing to see such an insightful essay into the philosophy animating much of the politics in this nation. More people should stop viewing philosophy as an arcane preoccupation of sophists and recognize the crucial role it plays in Western civilization.

When the referents for language become obscured or washed away in the public discourse, and people start believing that language is but a means to an end and cannot adequately describe reality (leading to demoralization, cynicism, action fetishes, and the “will to power” of collectivist movements), language is reality (leading often to utopianism, triumphalism, and the rise of the demagogue), then the civilization begins to cannibalize itself. Civilizations are built on communication and organization, the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and history, and the allocation of resources, determined by law and justice, in order to nourish and sustain life.

When the language is decayed, communications and organization suffer, and the links of history, knowledge, tradition, and philosophy become severed. This leads to an existential crisis in the youth generation, which may narcissisticly view itself as the culmination of all history (instead of an integral part of the story of humanity), resulting in hubris, the disregard of the limits of material reality (resource scarcity, e.g.), and human nature. In other words, entropy in the language feeds a false sense of “freedom,” freedom from all constraints, including those of rationality, morality, and reality.

Dear Professor,
I must have neglected to put my name on a previous post. I’m the one who just finished A WAR LIKE NO OTHER. I learned from the book that the democracy kept the war going because the poor and misfits saw there was as a chance to advance in society.

Since the killing was equal for high born as well as low, there were opportunities for advancement. It’s the poor that drive the discontent and understandibly so. Like ACORN and Obama. They push their way and the social structure gives.

Liberals have been “post-modern” for a long, long time. Post-modernism was something invented to make an old, tired and oft-repudiated ideology seem new and orginal (evolved) when, in fact, there was/is nothing new or orginal about it.

But Mr. Hansen, you are so harsh!!!~ At least the good news is they are going to CONTROL COSTS!!. /sarcasm off

“Post Modernism” is just code word weasel words for “Thou SHALT Covet”: and we are on the slippery slope we wind up on when we do start to covet what “the other” persons have, and it becomes national policy by democrat party.

34. Phil Grimm, “Now I am speaking as a member of the American conservative/libertarian community. We must compose our response. Will these changes stand? Will we come to love this new world order? Can we peacefully change these new rules, will we have to learn to live with them, or will we choose to fight against them? If we choose to fight, what will be our choice of weapons?–Words? Ballets? Bullets?…How would a modern (or perhaps postmodern) civil war be fought? Asymmetrical warfare? IED’s on the public highways? Targeting public employees?”

Phil, violence isn’t the answer… it would play right into the hands of our opponents. There are many tools yet to be used that are both peaceful and exceedingly effective. Lawful civil assembly and protests, combined with civil disobedience could prove very effective, as was the case for the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. Most protests were lawful and peaceful demonstrations, with a much smaller number of targeted actions of civil disobedience, i.e. deliberate disobeying of unjust laws, by King and other movement leaders, as well as actions like targeted lunch counter sit-ins and the like.
The states themselves also have a very big role to play in opposing untrammeled federal power.

Wow I can’t imagine what Casey or her mother will lie about next!!! I can’t belive that the grandparents don’t know anything come on now a cadaver dog identified a spot in the backyard, come on now how could they not know? How could you not notice something amiss in your own yard? There are no kidnappers or anything else Casey killed her beautiful daughter for selfish reasons and is lying so hard to cover it up. Also how could she be having parties with her boyfriend while her child is missing? I would be beside myself if anything ever happened to my children. Casey also never reported Caylee missing to the police come on now that would be the first thing a mother would do!!! I just hope she lets her daughter be found so that she may rest in peace. Casey can’t be punished enough for her imoral acts. The grandparents know more than they are saying too and should also be held accountable for their actions. A child is a gift and a blessing not to be hurt or violated and destroyed!!!!! I pray I am wrong and that Caylee is safe but my insides tell me different.